That'll be 30gazillion CFA francs, Mr. Toubap

Many months ago, I drew a cartoon with Boubacar offering me a shoe for “R500, with bargain”. It turns out that was only the tip of the price negotiating iceberg.

Negotiating prices in Senegal was not as simple as my previous bargaining experiences in Taiwan. In fact, I was useless. There were three main reasons why:

1) I can’t speak Wolof. Contrary to what I wrote in the previous post, Wolof is not easy to pick up. So in actuality, Linda did all of the bargaining during my trip.
2) Senegalese people practice price negotiating for all of their life, and are already better than me when they start primary school. I first realised just how early the Senegalese start when I was watching TV with Linda and her six-year-old sister, Souad. This is, word for word, the conversation that they had:

Linda: Sousou, one more cartoon, and then I’m changing the channel.
Souad: No!
L: Yes!
S: Five more.
L: One.
S: Four.
L: Two
S: Three
L: Three, including this one.
S: Fine.
L: Done!

And then they went back to watching Peppa Pig’s dad flip pancakes.

3) I am white. Unless you’re applying to college or trying to hide in a flock of ravens, being white is very rarely a handicap. Yet when you’re buying stuff in Senegal, it is, because salesmen automatically assume that you have money (which makes sense; you bought the plane ticket), and hike the price up 500%. They also salivate when they see you.

This was most obvious for one good in particular: taxis. We frequently had to wave taxis away because they refused to take the fare down.

We did however have one secret weapon up our sleeves (asides from Linda’s years of practice and fluent Wolof): Rima Tahini. For every inflationary percentage point that I had on taxi prices, she added a deflationary one. To explain why, I have drawn a diagram of what goes on in the typical Senegalese taxi driver’s head when he sees me and Rima:

The taxi fare seesaw faces pressure from two sides. On the left is an oblivious white person with backpack, most likely containing the crown jewels, gold bullion, or both. He provides huge incentive to charge at prices normally associated with private jets and space tourism. On the right is a pretty girl, and her knees are showing. She provides huge incentive to forget the left side of the seesaw ever existed and pursue marriage.

Faced with this choice, most taxi drivers went back to offering normal rates, but some did in fact ask if they could have Rima. Every time, she had the same reaction. She would laugh in their faces, and then return to her blackberry to continue texting Malick.


And now a bonus cartoon about bargaining that I definitely think ALA should use for publicity:

Can Mohammed Barry Feem?

Did you know that there are giant pictures of Mohammed Barry's mouth threatening to engulf an entire vehicle, all over Senegal? It's true! But more on that later.

When I was seven, I began taking French, and my teacher, Monsieur Grimal, showed us a map of the world with random bits coloured in red. Monsieur Grimal told us that they were known as the "francophone" countries. They were important, and had names such as Madagascar, La Martinique, and Guinea Conackry. It seemed to me like excessive boasting, and I was not won over by his argument that this made my homework all the more important. In fact, I was fairly certain that countries like La Guadeloupe and Morocco would have very little to do with my life. French was for France, and France only.

When I was thirteen, I dropped French so I could learn how to write Chinese.

I spent the last three weeks in Senegal, which is, amongst other things, 1) not France, and 2) francophone. The moral of the story is that when I was seven I was an idiot.

Thankfully though, I was able the get around. This was partly because I remembered something, but mostly because English and French are closely related, and many words can be converted. Some, however, can not. For instance, when someone told me I was disgusting (dégueulasse), I thought he was calling me Legolas. Instead of apologizing, I beamed with joyous and inappropriate delight.

The hardest part of learning a new language is the sheer exhaustiveness of constantly paying attention. The reason for this is something that I have decided to call “The Luxury 5-second Recall”. I shall now demonstrate how it works with a randomly chosen word, in this case grapefruit. (The French translation is pamplemousse.)

First, this how I hear things in English:

The word goes in one ear

I remain blissfully unaware while it exits via the other

I realise that something has been said, snap out of

my stupor, and force the word to do a U-turn

so it can re-enter my brain, where I process it.

This is The Luxury 5-second Recall, and it is only an option if you are familiar enough with a language to remember and instantaneously comprehend sounds that were said a while back. It is also, as its name suggests, not to be taken for granted. Because if you are not that familiar with the words being said to you, something else happens:

The word goes in one ear

You remain blissfully unaware while it goes out the other

You realise that something has been said, and snap out of your stupor,

just in time to see the word, which you don't recognise, waft off into space

Meanwhile the conversation has continued without you,

leaving your brain empty and sullen.

*It's gone!

Basically, if you’re fluent in a language, you can understand it not just when you listen to it, but also when you hear it. If you're not fluent, your brain has to remain alert all day, which is painful.

French is not the only language spoken in Senegal though. The country has around 7 main ethnic groups (if you include the Lebanese, which you should; they’re everywhere), and each one has its own native tongue. However, the two most widely spoken languages are French and Wolof. For many Senegalese people, French is for school and words that have yet to been translated into Wolof, and Wolof is for everything else. This includes, but is not limited to: bargaining on the streets for Chinese-made flip flops, telling jokes, swearing, and pointing out white people as they pass by.

On the surface, Wolof sounds incredibly alien. It is written with loads of x’s and full of sounds like “wek”, “nek”, and “buhguhnuhduhguh”. Additionally, nobody is really sure what the standard way to write it is.

Yet on closer inspection, it is quite simple to learn. My epiphany came after I saw an advertisement in Dakar that read, “Kan Mo Bari Feem?” On it was a man with his mouth open, and he was about to engulf an entire car. It was the Rosetta Stone that I needed, and my mind sprung into optimistic action. Here is a diagram of my hopeless yet somewhat brilliant thought process:

Mohammed Barry is a student at ALA. Who knew he was so famous?

In actuality, “kan mo bari feem” means “who has the most swag?” But of course, we already know the answer to that: “Mohammed Barry has the most swag!” After all, he eats cars. It doesn't get much more swaggerfantastic than that.

Boys' Night Out

My year at the African Leadership Academy is over, but I’m going to start blogging again.

I haven’t posted for months because it took time and I needed a break; a short comic strip consumes an excessive 2 hours.

Yet there was another reason as well. ALA’s vision is to create the next generation of African leaders, the next generation of Nelson Mandela’s. Unfortunately, the path to Madiba-dom appears to be structured around an authentic yet occasionally chaotic parody of Mandela’s Robben Island years, and the gap years are not really warned beforehand. This creates, amongst other woes, cabin fever. In February I came up with a new academy tag line: “Prison with a vision”. This blog was a funny way to keep in touch, preserve memories, and make observations, but it was also my effort towards creating a mindset that would help me to survive the frustrations of taking my year off in a startup company with so many rules.

Yet as I grew to love the people at ALA I did not need this blog anymore, so it fell by the wayside.

A conclusion to tie things up is coming, but there are events and jokes that I would like to record. As a quick update, I spent the last month in Senegal, and finished ALA before that. Posts shall vary between the two topics, and will also feature cartoons that I drew in my (lined) notebook during the Senegal vacation.

And now for a couple comics.

The first one dedicated to my father, who often jokes that I should give my children properly Anglo Saxon names.

If you didn’t get it, don't worry, you have company. Ethelburga was a popular name about 1500 years ago. In fact, there is still a famous school with that name in England. On the bright side, if you didn't laugh at the pun, you can now laugh at the hilarious new name you've learnt.

The second is hopefully more obvious, provided that you understand the following sentence: "Imagine that Monopoly had an ALA edition."

*There are three ingredients to success: talent, chance, and 10,000

hours of practice. At ALA, we replace chance with opportunity.

later that night...

How To Use Sarcasm

Every culture has its own linguistic peculiarities that are difficult for outsiders to understand. I come from two countries, the US and England, which use a lot of sarcasm (especially England). Yet at ALA, my peers often think I’m cruel or moronic, or both. Some of our teachers face similar misunderstandings. This is my attempt to provide some understanding for any confused people out there.

On a basic level, sarcasm is the art of saying the exact opposite of what you mean in order to mock something. It does however have many other nuanced and ironical uses. Sarcasm is mostly conveyed through tone, and can’t really be written down, but I’m going to try.

Here is an introductory example to show why it is important to understand sarcasm. It includes two characters: 1) Our guide for today, “Sarcastick”, who is in fact a tick, and 2) his friend, the famous arthropod rap artist, Lice Cube. Sarcastick has a congenital disease that makes it impossible for him to complete a conversation without at least one sarcastic comment. When he makes those remarks, his speech bubbles are shaded in.





The moral of the story is: If you don’t understand sarcasm, you may injure your face. If you didn’t quite get the cartoon, never fear, all shall be explained! I hope.

In this example, Sarcastick emphasized the stupidity of Lice Cube’s idea by commending it in a mocking tone. And that’s basically it: sarcasm is making fun of things by ironically saying the opposite. Unfortunately, Lice Cube didn’t know that.


The first step to understanding sarcasm is to distinguish it from being straightforward. Here is a confused snail, and Sarcastick’s frank, non-sarcastic response:





But Sarcastick prefers sarcasm, so he uses a ridiculing tone to say something ridiculously untrue.




Detecting sarcasm can be difficult, but a good way to start is to ask yourself, “Would a logic person believe those words?” If the answer is no, perhaps he or she is being sarcastic.

If your greatest weakness in this world in mathematics, is somebody likely to recommend it to you as a future career? No. He or she is making fun of you. Would a sane person or arachnid encourage you to smash your face on a lamppost? No. It’s silly idea, don’t do it. Sarcasm is not meant to be interpreted literally.

I am well aware at this point that Sarcastick seems like a complete b*#@$, and so far that's true, but sarcasm has other uses. Unluckily, they are harder to notice, but they are also preferable in that they are less biting. Here is a sample of sarcasm's more nuanced uses:

It can be used for harmless small talk, and to make fun of an undesirable situation. A lot of us have seen something like this before:



Sarcastick inferred that the weather sucked through sarcasm, and Snail replied in an appropriately sarcastic manner.

It can also be used as an indirect request:




Here, Cricket has demonstrated something else that is important: sarcasm can be interpreted as a horrible taunt, but it can also be seen as a joking, roundabout way of saying, "Excuse me, please be less obnoxious". He realised that, and apologised.

It can also be used for self pity. Fyodor Dostoevsky once said that sarcasm is “usually the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.” Mhmm. Us sarcasm lovers are merely invaded and chaste souls.

Okay that's not true, but sarcasm can be used as a despairing cry. Imagine that Sarcastick is for some reason stuck with a boring and talkative spider:



Lastly, it can be used to give advice, and even to show how vapid popular belief is. So next time your hear something like this:



Remember that it could be a sarcastic joke. Sarcastick is merely emphasizing that your life won't end if you fail to attend Columbia by mocking the morons who think that it will. After all, Ivy Leagues aren't everything. Just ask Steve Jobs.

At the end of the day, sarcasm is least hurtful to those who are used to it, but it is also an important, versatile, and often hilarious aspect of British culture. For that reason, I am very fond of it, and I hope that one day you will be too.

*This is a not a woeful misspelling of "Columbia", but a horribly nerdy joke. Collembola is the scientific name for spring tails, which are these jumpy things that live just about everywhere. They look sort of like the spring tail I've drawn, and I make no apologies for being a complete dweeb.

Cape Town Eating and the Two Maxwells

Julia, Gaciru, Timothy, and I, otherwise known as Juci Limothy, are currently voyaging in Cape Town, one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever visited; it's sandwiched by the sea and Table Mountain. If you’re not sure where to go to university, go to UCT.

The only downside to Cape Town is that the weather is as confused as a chameleon on a smarties box (I shamelessly stole that second part from Madame G). We were in a tour bus on Monday, and out of nowhere a freezing fog rolled in, and we couldn’t see anything at all.

Speaking of traveling through clouds, we flew here on Kulula, which is a comedic, no frills airline. As we were landing, the air hostess made this announcement:

“Please do not forget anything you brought on board; any belongings left on the plane will be divided among the crew. If you must leave anything, please make sure it is something we will like. But please, no spouses on children; we are desperately trying to get some of our own.”

Unfortunately, they weren’t as logical as they were funny. My hand luggage weighed too much, but it was one bag inside of the other, so I took the inside one out. The lady then told me that since the two bags were each under the limit, I was welcome to take both on board.

I know what I’m doing next time:




Our first day in town was filled with Maxwells. We were served not by one, but two of them. The first was Maxwell 1, our taxi driver. He was incredibly friendly, scolded us for not conversing in his cab, and gave us an excellent rate. He was a perfect human. The second was our waiter at Nandos, Maxwell 2. He was forgetful, undedicated to the task of bringing us rolls, and charged me for an extra spicy rice. He was as amnesiac as Maxwell 1 was talkative.

On the upside, I did learn that chicken livers are not as good as chicken meat.

Thankfully, we found other people to serve us food, most notably Gaciru’s future husband, Bruno Mars. He’s not actually Bruno Mars, but there is some resemblance, so that’s his name for now. He’s so adorable he could live in FAO Schwartz, and he has a winning smile that almost covers his braces, which he manages to make cute. He also makes ordering food very fun.



Bruno Mars works at our new watering hole, Food Inn, which is an affordable authentic Indian restaurant. Intrepidly, I’ve only ordered things that I haven’t heard of before. On Monday, I had a bright pink milkshake called Bombay Falooda. It had gelatinous rice noodles in it, and tasted like nothing I’d ever had before. Wikipedia tells me it had rose syrup in it. Hectic, no?

I only use hectic ironically, by the way.

Actually, Food Inn isn’t our watering hole at all, because as all US citizens should know, our national watering hole is Subway. We can't go to Subway in Jo'burg, so that first Cape Town footlong felt like sipping nectar from the chalice of Bachus, receiving a hug from Mr. Peter, and taking off ice skates, all in one. It felt that good.

I'm saving what we’ve actually done for the next post, but I will end with my favorite part of Cape Town.

For my entire life, I’ve been confused about what to call myself. Am I Taiwanese? Am I American? What about my British love for sarcasm, cardigans, and cold sausages? My grandfather is Irish, the other was from Mainland Chinese, and my middle name is Scandinavian. Perhaps I should call myself Sven McHong... The debate goes on. My individuality could have been pieced together by Matisse on LSD.

But now I’m in Cape Town, a place where Tuesday and Wednesday can’t agree on a season, and where God wasn’t sure whether to create a mountain range, a seaside resort, or a developing metropolis, so he put all three. Most importantly, it’s a city where nobody is certain what they are; Cape Town is the world’s melting pot. Cape Tonians even have a name for mixed people (apart from "other", or "beige"): Coloured. Here, I fit right in.


Wellll no. Because I walk down the street with Gaciru, and South African society is stratified, even in Cape Town. You can be whomever you want and do whatever you want, but not necessarily around whomever you want. Many Cape Tonians are bewildered when they see Half Asians walking down the street with Kenyans. Their heads explode.




Just wait until they hear our accents!

Famous People I Almost Met

Posting during a power cut! I'm magic.

So what has been going on in the weird and wonderful world of the African Leadership Academy? For starters, I attended a talk by Mallam Lamido Sanusi, who is officially the best central bank governor in the world, and an absolute baller. I also saw Thabo Mbeki.




Okay so that’s obviously not true. If you’re currently confused, Thabo Mbeki was the president of South Africa, and AIDS and Mugabe were his two major policy failings. If you’re currently outraged, it’s also fair to point out that Mbeki is and was an extremely shrewd politician, a strong proponent of the “African renaissance”, and the in some ways the co-creator of the African Union, along with Olesegun Obasanjo. He was on the whole a great leader, with peaks and troughs.

Anyway, so this is what really happened: I had just woken up and was doing my homework on a couch in a state of extreme drowsiness when all of a sudden, Thabo Mbeki and an escort of six blazer-clad students stopped next to me. I wanted to get up and talk to him, but I was wearing tank top, 70% of my hair was on the left side of my head, and I was so surprised that I couldn’t think of how to begin the conversation.


Thankfully, I stayed on the couch and pretended not to exist. The tour group admired some vegetables growing outside and then left. It was an underwhelming experience, but on the bright side, I am now a member of a wonderfully exclusive club: “People Who Have Been 6ft from Thabo Mbeki Whilst Still In Their Pajamas.” Only at ALA.

A few days later, I missed a talk by Francis Collins by unwittingly going off campus during it. Disappointed, I made investigations into how we got the director of the US National Institutes of Health to come to ALA, and I discovered that Mr. Scudder and him are besties. Now that’s what I call keeping good company.

Since I don’t have much to say about Francis Collins, I’m going to substitute with Mr. Scudder. Mr. Scudder is ALA’s head of science, and so clever that he has only ever used the words “stressed” and “overwhelmed” as expressions of pity for others. He is from Nashville, works part time as the muse of integrity, and is a wonderful hall master. Mr. Scudder also has one small yet consistent mannerism: everything he says could be preceded by the phrase “Well, (insert name here), quite frankly…” It might not immediately make sense at the moment, but it will.

Have you noticed that Mr. Scudder’s eyebrows are almost constantly raised, and that he often nods when he’s talking to you? You probably have. Well, those are the top two indicators of forthrightness. Happy, pensive, angry, or cordial, Mr. Scudder is always forthright. Here are some examples of how "Well, (insert name here), quite frankly…” can be very easily inserted into Mr. Scudder’s sentences:


ME: How are you Mr. Scudder?
MR. SCUDDER: Well quite frankly Liam, I’m doing well.


Mr. Scudder is always doing well.


EMMANUEL: Mr. Scudder, can you please let me into your classroom? I left my laptop there…
MR. SCUDDER: Well quite frankly Emmanuel, I caaaan't I’m afraid. But quite frankly, why don’t you come by later, and maybe I can help you then.



MR. SCUDDER: Well quite frankly Mohamadou, you got me drop!*


This is Mr. Scudder’s code for “throw the Frisbee backwards”.


ME: Mr. Scudder, I think Jeshi should make smores during our bonfire.
MR. SCUDDER: Well quite frankly Liam, I like your style, and I think playing guitar next to a roaring bonfire is the best thing ever! And quite frankly, I majored in fireside strumming in college, with a minor in taking every class I wanted…just to see how many unconnected A’s I could get. It was, frankly…awesome.


My father is a geneticist.

So what's the result of all this directness? Mr. Scudder is harder to disagree with than Ms. Gater. That's an achievement and a half.

Absense Makes...The Thumb Grow Bigger

I now post so infrequently that it’s unlikely anybody checks this blog regularly, but if you do, I’m very sorry. In my defense, I haven’t been able to hold a pen accurately for two weeks. My thumb was horribly infected and inflamed, and after antibiotics failed, the doctor injected anesthetic into it with a pocket bayonet, and then physically removed the infection with her scalpel. Until a few days ago, my cartoons looked like this:



If you think it looks exactly the same as usual, please don't tell me.

I also spent the entire week picking stuff up with just my index and middle fingers, which was awesome because I felt like a T-Rex, and not so awesome because I couldn't lift anything heavier than my tictacs.

I attempted to used my left hand, which up until this point in my life had just three purposes:

1) to club things very lightly.
2) to shake somebody's hand when my right hand was busy holding something bulky.
3) to type the letters a,s,d, and f over and over again in a random and continuous stream.

This shall forever be the week when I realized that I cannot brush my teeth or shave lefty. The whole experience reminded me of a nursery rhyme my dad used to read me when I was tiny:

Little Jack Horner
Sat in the corner,
Eating a Christmas pie;
He put in his thumb,
And pulled out a plum,
And said 'What a good boy am I!’

Unfortunately, my thumb only looked like there was a plumb stuck on it.

I have a backlog of prospective posts now, so more stuff to follow, starting Monday, when I wProxy-Connection: keep-alive
Cache-Control: max-age=0

l have access to a scanner again. Possible topics include US foreign policy in the Middle East, James Franco, Mr. Scudder, and Ms. Mhlaba.